Kalimat al-Mutafalsif

Well, in case you can't guess from the title, it's been exactly a year since I started this blog. To be more specific, it was November 20th of last year that I registered the domain. This post also (totally not planned, I swear) happens to be my 100th. Again, to be more specific it's my 100th page... pages include things such as my warhammer picture pages and the others you find under "Pages" on the right. So, this'll be a fun past, five days in the making, about all kinds of things dealing with the past year. ((Published a second time, I apologize))

Some History
The domain was registered while taking one of my patented Long Thanksgiving Breaks. That was ThanksGaming 2005, and I grabbed the domain one night while talking to that coder I always mention, Malaprop of Cambrian House. Malaprop kindly put the domain on his site, installed WordPress, and away I went. My first actual post (I believe) was on the 20th of 2005, but it was accidentally deleted, so the first surviving post is from the 21st.
Read More »

Ok, it has come to light that one settlement with Sony/BMG would allow for the users to get some compensation. A whole $7.50 in music downloads, and one extra album download. I don't have time right now (flying out rather soon) to go into details of how crappy a settlement this is, but it does allow for the cost of fixing the computer. As in, if I were to clean your system of this rootkit, and charged for it, Sony would be liable in small claims court.
Read More »

Taken from a post on slashdot in response to one of the many Sony theads.
Read More »

Ok then. Back by popular demand, my take on the Sony Fiasco, translated into human-ese.
Read on for more.
Read More »

And it only gets better!

Apparently, Sony knew about the security flaws (they call 'em features *wink*) since the beginning of October. The flaws weren't told to the public (by an outsider) until the END of October. Now, what would happen to, say, a car company that hid a flaw for a month in the hopes it'd go unnoticed? It's called willful neglect. I hope they get strung up for this all the more.

First I thought they were stupid, just couldn't write good software.
Then I thought they were incompetant, for not checking what they put in (GPL code).
Now I think they're evil and should all burn for knowingly and willingly letting this stay out for a month as vulnerable as it is!

But luckily for us, the consumer, Sony-BMG had this to say:
"We're very, very sorry for the disruption and inconvenience that this has caused to music consumers," (Thomas Hesse, president of Sony BMG's Global Digital Business).

That guy is a grade A joker, with everything he's said. Seriously guys, making fun of Bush's speeches is so 2003, lets jump on Hesse instead. This is the same guy who said that rootkits are OK, because the average user doesn't know what it is.... *blank stare*

Very sorry? Very SORRY?! If I infected millions of computers with a virus, I wouldn't be very sorry, I'd be in jail!! For anyone who thinks that is an unfair assumption, notice that the Sony rootkit has been found on computers in most major corporations (Fortune 500, the works) as well as DoD and foreign government systems.

Sorry doesn't cut it anymore, and these guy MUST pay. I don't care if First4Internet wrote it, Sony must take responsibility for this, just as a car company would have to if they didn't issue a recall for bad brakes they didn't make.

And this whole rant isn't even on DRM itself, merely Sony's raping of people's rights (colorful? yes. appropriate? definatly).

Think again. For those of you who have not been following the Sony-BMG fiasco, please read on.
Read More »